And Fools Shine On
by gekizetsu
Summary: Dean's been souljacked. And nothing in their arsenal is going to save Sam from his brother.
1. Saltline

**And Fools Shine On**  
(c)2006 b stearns  
**Author's note:** Title stolen from a Brother Cane song; the lyrics are easy to find and I'd suggest it.  
**Boring trivia:** This was intended to be a one-chapter hit and run, and then the plot bunny gnawed on my spine until I kept adding chapters. I hit it with a rolled up newspaper; the fuzzy bastard kept gnawing anyway. The plot bunny actually attacked during a set change at a Disturbed concert, of all places. Many many thanks to the sn LJ community folks who have been nice enough to encourage me and anyone here who's reviewed any of my nonsense so far. _Sorry for the present tense I had no choice._

* * *

-I-

Sam knows to be inside by dark.

No matter where he is, it's always somewhere he can get indoors; a place where he can count on more than walls and locks. There's no hiding, so he's stopped trying. But he doesn't make things easier than he has to for what stalks him. The presence of others, the threat of silver bullets he can't fire, the gathering of every bit of artificial light he can obtain - none of these put it off. Sam is the flame that draws this particular moth. The moth knows him well enough to haunt his steps and occasionally it's somewhere just before he is.

Tonight it's a travel lodge in upstate New York. He knows he's close to the Pennslyvania border and doesn't care enough to pinpoint exactly where anymore. All that's important is that he set up shop while he's still got daylight. It doesn't come out in the daylight, and Sam doesn't know for certain yet whether that's restriction or choice. He's pretty sure now that it's the former, because it wants him badly enough to do whatever it has to in order to get him. The last couple of nights it's been nearly as frantic as Sam.

He wonders if it's running out of time.

He remembers when he and Dean found that last hotel room their father had been staying in. The walls, completely covered with newspaper accounts and legends and photos, scribblings and incantations; the bed surrounded with salt. He almost laughs about the parallel as he tacks things to the walls, things for alternately warding off or trying to save what will come to his door later. He has ideas, he has leads, he still has hope. He's methodically being worn down to a shadow no one would recognize, since he exists now in a haze of dread and that fickle thread of hope. He's not sure how long he can really go on like he is.

_Hey, dad, what do you think about your son now?_

When twilight threatens, he realizes he's been too caught up to do the one thing, the _only_ thing that will give him a choice. He pulls one of several cylindrical containers of salt from his duffel on the single bed. As an afterthought, he lays a handgun beside it as a last resort: the .45 automatic his brother favored, the Glock. Nine in the magazine and one in the chamber, silver wrought by his brother's hand. He hasn't used a single silver bullet since he became a solo act. He can't waste them, knowing it was one of the last things Dean did, making that batch. He needs to hold onto everything Dean was and did.

The line of salt in front of the doorway is an inch thick and an inch high, and there are no breaks. He leaves the door open because he needs to do that as well. He doesn't want to hear it knock. There's a single window and he salts the sill as carefully as he can.

He hangs a protection charm from the top of the door. It's a joke, he knows it is, because he's seen what it wears around its own neck and it mocks him with it at every turn. But he has to do what he can.

He returns to his laptop, searching for hints, grasping at straws, adding to his obsessive collection of parts that might make him whole again. He's closer than he was a week ago, and that alone makes his existence tolerable.

Sam never hears it, when it arrives; he simply knows it's there. He wants that to be due to some sort of recognition, that the form it wears is not all that's left. Dark has fallen and yellow lamplight paints him with the same wan afterglow it has for weeks, finding his hollows. The hollow thing wearing his brother pauses on the other side of the saltline and smirks. It's an expression his brother used to wear often, but not with anything approaching the level of malice Sam can see in its eyes. Never in their shared lives had Dean looked at him with such vituperative longing or even been capable of it.

It braces its hands on either side of the doorway, and some part of the back of Sam's mind that isn't screaming in silent anguish notes that it's careful to keep those hands on the outside of the doorframe so as not to cross the threshold.

"Sammy," once-Dean says, "...you can do better than this."

Sam hates it that Dean's eyes haven't changed. He wants a violation of this magnitude to be more visible than it is, but it's still only that calm hazel gaze waiting for him to falter, pinning him unblinking and eating him alive. He isn't completely sure when Dean was taken over, but it's not like it hadn't happened before. The skinwalker in St. Louis managed to grab Dean without Sam knowing until it was too late. He had not watched Dean as diligently as Dean had watched him, and he regretted it now with every breath. This was no skinwalker; whatever this was, it didn't borrow form or function. It wore his _brother_ around with a casual disregard.

"You would know," Sam says and his voice is as steady as any offhand conversation. "If you were Dean."

There's a full-on grin this time, and it hangs its head a little. "I am," it breathes in his brother's voice. "Every fucking thing and just a little more."

Sam gets up and comes as close as he dares, and it tracks him with Dean's eyes with a flash of wariness that he doesn't miss. This is new; at first Sam was always plastering himself to the opposite wall. The first few nights there had been tears, and threats, and denial. There was no way the thing in the doorway knew what to do with a Sam who fought back. "He's fighting you, isn't he," Sam says, and Dean's face has never been an open book for what he really thinks, but whatever this is isn't as contained and has most likely never played poker. Sam sees a flicker of uncertainty and he finally feels his foot lodge in an intangible door that he can pry at as he chooses. "He's not going to let you rest any more than you let me. I can almost feel sorry for you. Dean can be a real pain in the ass."

Those eyes glance toward the bed, at the handgun in plain sight. "Not going to shoot me when I really need it?" once-Dean says. "You had no problem before. Or is it that you just can't bring yourself to shoot something that _looks_ like me...unless it really is me?" The creature runs fingertips down the outside of the doorframe while watching Sam with its head tilted forward, smirking at him from below. Sam knows the caress is meant for him and tries not to flinch. "Right, Sam?"

Dean would never do this to him. Dean would turn a gun on himself before he'd do this. But Sam has to believe there's still something of Dean in the thing at his door every night. He'll shatter otherwise. Not a single thing in their arsenal is going to protect him from his brother. Dean is even still wearing the same protection charm; blasphemy of the highest kind. He has always been dangerous, but never to Sam, even in his worst moments.

Whatever is behind those eyes, it doesn't love him. It wants him, yes, with a blistering lust that changes the very air Sam breathes. He can almost taste how bad it wants him to come within reach.

"You're going to wear out before I do," Sam hears himself say. His own voice is a parody, even worse than the one in the doorway. "We're going to break you down."

"Sammy...please," once-Dean whispers, face and tone suddenly plaintive, and it's every broken thing Sam has ever known. It's blood and tears and fire and the death of hope. "I need you."

And it does. But not for the same things Dean would need him for. The voice in the doorway is not his brother's, and he knows it but that doesn't stop it from stripping him down to an agony of tattered nerve endings. It doesn't mean anything it says or feel the pain it portrays. It's only here to subvert Sam. Sam is careful not to look back, because it might try the wide, pleading, tear-filled look again.

He hates and adores the form in the doorway with a wretched abandon that he didn't realize he was capable of. He's beyond fear now and it leaves him with handfuls of sad insight and loss. But it also clears his head enough to keep going.

"Dean," Sam says, "if you can hear me at all, I haven't given up. But if there's nothing left, I won't let you go on like this. You've gotta know that."

There's steel in his tone that hasn't been there before, and the dynamic shifts. Once-Dean raises its head.

"You silly. Little. Bastard. I have both of you, and I'll keep you."

Sam doesn't react. It won't do him any good.

"I'll be back again tomorrow night," once-Dean says, and when the smirk becomes something almost warm, it's all Sam can do not to come a bit closer. "Wherever you are. I'll always know where you are, Sam. And sooner or later you'll either have to do what's right, or what you _want_."

"I'll do both," Sam says. His hands no longer shake.

It shoves itself away from the doorway and scuffs Dean's feet into the dark, whistling. It'll be back to check on him throughout the night. It has no choice. Vehicle and occupant both want the contents of the room too much to stray far.

Sam goes on shining into the dark, the final flame of what was. His moth of a once-brother circles, and sooner or later one may snuff the other.

-I-


	2. Occupational Hazard

**Warnings:** Rambling in present tense. With cussing. _Much_ love to those who have reviewed.

* * *

-I- 

Dean knows to be inside by daylight.

He's not exactly sure how he knows the difference, since he has no view on the world anymore. But he can sense it every so often, be it his internal chronometer or the occasional moment of connection with his physical self. He gets random senses back sometimes, traffic sounds or his own heartbeat. Not enough to let him get his bearings, but enough to let him know he's still alive. And there's still a world.

He can't stand being a passenger. Not in his car and sure as hell not in his own head.

He doesn't know how long it's been since, but he remembers Sam making him laugh while they were standing on the side of the road. They'd pulled over in the dark in the middle of nowhere to get air and take a leak and just stop being in the car. Sam had said something in that low, deadpan, wry way that had first surfaced when he was about nine, that way that made Dean realize no one was ever going to be funnier than Sam. He had laughed in a way he didn't often, open sky above and brothers made of interlocking pieces below, each what the other was not, one realizing it again without saying so and laughing over it on a dark road.

The moment of accidental openness let something step sideways into him. He remembers that moment of crashing and burning too clearly. It was embarassing to be on home turf and not be able to defend it. The overwhelming pressure of the thing had been trying to shove him out altogether, but he wasn't about to go. And so he was barricaded in this place-that-was-not.

He'd finally quit raging at it, too. All that freaking out has made him feel better and kept its attention for awhile, but it's also worn him out. This wasn't like running until he thought his lungs would burst, or pounding the hell out of whatever needed it. His soul is not used to running and hiding. And anyway, he's run out of adjectives and invectives to hurl. Inventing curse words is hilarious, but even he can't make that last forever; there's only so much he can threaten it with. It's more patient than he is, and that makes him even angrier. He finally realizes he can't psych it out, not the way he's going about it. Sam probably can.

Oh, Sam. _Sorry, sorry, sorry._

He knows Sam is still walking the good waking world because the _fucker _that's messing with them keeps coming to the door in Sam's form.

Dean knows the door isn't real any more than this internal room he's settled himself into is real. He's constructed it to keep the bastard off him. It wanders by and rattles the knob and taps its fingers along the span of door in patterns of bugfuck craziness. Sometimes it sits out there with its back against the door and harangues him in Sammy's voice.

Sometimes it weeps and begs him for help in that voice.

If he can get it solid somehow, if it has a heart of some kind, Dean has decided he's going to find a way to _eat it_.

"With a looooot of salt, motherfucker," he says aloud. "And your little dog, too."

At first, the room looked like the last hotel room he and Sam shared before he screwed the pooch and let the squatter in. That had faded the longer he was trapped. For awhile it had been bare altogether, and that had scared the hell out of him. He would wake and see bare echoing space and realize he had left himself very little internal clutter to arrange. Sure, it's hard to prepare to be trapped in one's own mind due to paranormal hijacking. _Deanjacking_. Fuckin' occupational hazard. But he should have had a backup plan.

He hears it out there again, drawing patterns on the closed door with what it wants him to believe are Sam's fingers. Not his Sam, never his Sam.

"You suck," Dean tells the door.

There's a beat of silence from the other side. Then, "Are you still trying to figure out what to do with yourself?"

The tone is dead-on Sam when Sam can't believe how Dean is behaving: _are you for real, _with a scatter of laughter at the edges.

"I'm figuring out what to do with you," Dean says.

"Just like a shark," it says, and Dean can tell by the muffling of its voice that it's pressed itself face-first to the door. He can _feel_ it there, can get a sense of what it's made of. "Keep moving or die. No one else knows you, eldest, and so you don't even know yourself. _Not even light escapes._"

Dean is mentally listing Metallica's entire song catalogue in order so as not to start the made-up cursing again. When he gets to _Load _he pauses to add a bit of trivia about how the master for that album was put in jeopardy when another occupant of the same studio had a fit and destroyed some of the sound equipment. That Journey guy. Steve Perry. Then he thinks about what would happen if Metallica and Journey got into an all-out street brawl, and he thinks maybe Neal Schon is tough enough to take Lars Ulrich down but there's no way Perry has a chance against Hetfield.

"Sam is alone now, too, Dean."

Dean tries so hard not to react. It's better to think about how everyone said _Load_ was a sellout, but they've been saying that since _Ride The Lightning_ and it's complete bullshit.

"He's been taking your gun out lately."

Dean realizes he's not physical, but that doesn't keep what could be his stomach from clenching in anxiety. If there was a shred of truth to that, then Sam was gearing himself up for something. Sam would try and save him even if it meant not letting him go on.

_Sorry. Sorry, Sam. What's it been doing to you with my face?_

"I told you already that you _suck_," Dean says. "I hope he fucking shoots me and gets it done, so I don't have to keep listening to your boring ass."

"I don't think the gun's for you, Dean," it says, and this time Dean comes off the floor before he knows he's going to. He nails the door dead center with the flat of one foot - he's still wearing his boots, his soul has boots, he loves this - and hears the bastard stumble away from the other side at the force of the impact. He's too pissed off to follow it up with a verbal assault, so he wheels away from the door again when it laughs.

_His_ door. _His_ choice.

He stands in his empty room that he's sentenced himself to and remembers again that while it's busy bothering him, it's probably not able to simultaneously rag on Sam. That's good. Sooner or later it'll wander away again and he can look for chinks in the armor.

He sighs because he is the armor.

"So many pretty girls on the ceiling," the thing outside says. "So many years trying to keep there from being more. If it's ever safe again, do you think you'll even know how to behave around other people?"

"You're not just boring now," Dean says. "You're a joke. Run along and die."

He thinks about how he was able to force it away from the door moments ago. Whatever he needs to go head-to-head with the thing probably isn't in him any longer. He's never been so tired in his life. It took too much out of him to hit the door, after all the energy he wasted venting his frustration on it.

_Fucked up again, Dean, awesome job!_

It's back and running what sounds like a palm along the door. Testing, taunting. "Come on out, Dean," it says, but the tone indicates it doesn't really care. "You're taking up so much space that I need."

"Come and get me, bitch," Dean yells from the opposite wall. "Make sure and turn your back when it gets light again. Because you're stuck in here with me then, aren't you."

Things get very quiet on the other side of the door.

"Turn your back when it's dark again, too, because that's when you're out messing with Sam. I see your pattern. _Way to go_."

It doesn't retort for once, but he can still feel it there. It's in his headspace with him but can't figure out what he knows.

Dean begins singing Pantera's 'Cowboys From Hell' at the top of his lungs until he can feel the thing wander away. _They say the bad guys wear black, we're tagged and can't turn back. _When he's pretty sure it's dark outside again, he opens the door. It looks like miles of prairie for whatever reason, and he wonders if it's some subconscious idea of home he thinks he has. It doesn't matter to him; he's hunting.

-I-


	3. Adjuration

Damn, you guys are all way too good to me. :grinning:

* * *

-I- 

The next night, his brother's form is crouched outside the door. Just outside the best of the light, down on haunches, hands clasped between knees. The silver ring on the right hand catches more light than the face cocked just out of view, but Sam can see the gleam of eyes and teeth occasionally, when it grins. When it uses Dean's face to grin. Not a skinwalker, not a demon, not a thought-form, nothing as easily defined as a possession. Any humanity doled out was borrowed and learned, not inherent.

It wants nothing to do with the Impala.

One of the only things that comforts Sam is that he knew immediately it wasn't Dean. It tried so hard not to tip him off when it turned to face him and answer him with Dean's voice. It had happened so fast and Sam had known regardless and stayed his hand because he knew he would have to try and save what remained. He had been smart enough to evade it and keep evading it and buy time.

Sam wonders again whether Dean is the prize or a means to an end. It's holding on with both hands and is careful not to harm the body it's in, because Sam can think of dozens of ways it could blackmail him into doing what it wants. It could make the body uninhabitable by degrees if it wanted. But Sam has yet to see a scratch. It needs physical contact to use its power, to take control.

Sam thinks it wants a matched set, then. Winchester bookends.

The voice is jeering but familiar enough to make Sam ache. "Any final thoughts? Anything you might want to say to this face?"

Sam has started referring to the creature as Once because he can't think of it as his brother, and he can't think of anything that looks like Dean as simply _it._

"Oh, that's right," once-Dean says. "You're not completely sure if _he's_ able to hear you or not. That's the big deal. If you were sure, then you wouldn't keep taking the gun out." The voice lowers into something Sam would usually think of as gently cajoling, were it not coming from such a dark place. "If you come out here, Sam, I'll help you be sure."

"No, thanks." Sam is pretending to be engrossed in his laptop. He knows from previous experience that it angers Once to distraction. Dean would simply repeat himself or wave a hand in Sam's direction. Sam feels the difference, all the differences.

"You're such a little bitch, Sam," Once says, and laughs.

The laughter holds promises that words can't touch, and Sam ignores the jab with singleminded determination. This thing is not new. It holds no connection to the job they were investigating at the time Dean was taken; it's simply a creature of opportunity. He knows that now.

"He was right," Once says. "Your _brother. _All the dark things just love you. Can't _resist_ you. Just blazing away into the dark, begging for attention. That's our Sam. You're a little attention whore anyway, aren't you, Sam?"

What haunts his door uses his name so casually. It can't seem to stop.

_Revenants are generally defined as the returning dead, but in some cases will only masquerade as such. They can be found in areas of high paranormal activity and are often not susceptible to traditional methods of expulsion._

Yeah, no shit. Except the salt. Sam is so grateful for salt, always and again.

_Unconventional and extreme methods have been employed over the centuries to remedy infestations, including: drowning the victims, burning an infected dwelling to the ground, and adjuration by an opposite number._

Sam pauses to consider the implications of _opposite number_.

_Adjuration is rather an earnest appeal, or a most stringent command requiring another to act, or not to act, under pain of divine visitation or the rupture of the sacred ties of reverence and love._

Sacred ties.

Once-Dean is much older than crucifixes and Latin; but not older than salt. And certainly not older than reverence or love.

"Are you all the dark things?" Sam says without turning. He wants to look but it gets harder every time. "Do you _love_ me?"

When there's no answer, he has to look. The look becomes a staring contest that Sam won't back down from. Once-Dean's gaze is steady and expressionless, so familiar on the outside and shining with nothing real behind.

Once-Dean stretches into a standing position again and regards him with a blatant lack of expression. "You make all your weaknesses so available," he says finally. "That's hard to ignore. Lighthouses are so hard to ignore."

Sam asks again, even though he's asked dozens of times before and received riddles or jeers. "What do you want from me?"

Now once-Dean is looking upward, at the top of the door, staring at the pentacle hanging from a bit of twine as if hypnotized by it. "It's been very dark."

"And you're just whistling in it," Sam says. "To keep yourself from falling apart. What are you running from, by chasing me?"

The grin breaks out and the eyes are back on Sam's again suddenly. "It won't hurt for very long, Sam. Dean didn't even scream."

Sam looks away again quickly so that it won't see his face.

Exorcism is not the way to go on this one. Sam already knows the traditional won't work and it doesn't flinch at the name of God in any language. There'll be no drowning or burning of the form in the doorway, so _adjuration_ will have to do. If he has to weaken the thing's hold with injuries that will heal later, he'll be strong enough to do that. He can apologize later. If the hold is only a sham and the form is now hollow...if there's nothing underneath to save...then there's the gun. He's strong enough for that too, because this is a promise made the day Sam was old enough to hunt.

_Sammy. Anything can happen. You know stuff is out here that can turn us. Don't let me go on into the dark. Promise me you won't let me run loose in the dark._

Sam thinks of an adage about sailors and paraphrases it to suit the form in the doorway. There are old hunters and bold hunters but no old, bold hunters. Dean is likely to be the most cantankerous old man he'll ever know, someday, and he's got to see it happen.

When it gets light again, he doesn't even bother trying to get some sleep. There's no way Once goes all that far to get out of the daylight; he still has limitations of some sort, being in Dean's body. What he's going to do once he finds it, Sam's not sure, but he has ideas. It doesn't matter to him. He's hunting.

-I-


	4. Entreaty

You guys have been so kind, I don't even have words. And I'm just about the wordiest girl in the world. :) Warnings: continued rambling in present tense with the grace of an ostrich in a leg brace. Patience and reviews adored with smooshy adoration.

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**-I-**

Sam returns to the same room closer to twilight than he meant to. His eyes are burning and he knows he's getting clumsy, but he also knows he's running out of time. He hasn't found a trace of where the thing is keeping Dean during the day; or at least not one that's recognizeable to him. None of the locals have seen that face or heard that voice, and everyone he's encountered has given him worried looks. Not a _weird stranger please go away_ type of worry; it's the even more dreaded _look at that poor boy about to drop _worry. Every now and then it degenerates to _I'll bet your missing brother is dead by the side of the road somewhere. _

He's tired enough to start thinking he should be able to sense Dean somehow. Six months has not refilled the part of him that recognized his brother after four years apart. A whole eighteen years prior had been derailed by that simple and necessary bid for freedom, and he realized that running like hell from place to place since Jess' death has not given him the grasp he needs on this older version of Dean. Sam himself has changed enough to shift the way they match up, continental drift of the soul, and adult Sam has not tried to fill in the gaps the way his younger self had yearned to do. He can't be what anyone else needs him to be, and he worries whether that's why Dean was taken so easily: the spots meant for Sam were left empty and maybe too easy to see.

He also worries about being capable of sense anymore.

When he tries to unlock the door with weary hands, it swings open too easily. The knob twists away in his hand before he can get the key in.

Sam rolls away to the right by instinct, and Dean's gun comes out of the small of his back, held low in steady hands, elbows locked. When nothing moves in the room for long, crystal clear seconds during which Sam holds his breath, he swings his left foot around and bangs the door open. It slams into the wall and rebounds, and still nothing comes to greet him. He tries to look everywhere at once, taking in the last slant of daylight across the faded carpet, the paint flaking off the door, the darker confines within still silent and feeling stale. He has no sense that anything's moving inside.

Once the initial shock wears off and he can glance at the floor again, cold realization steals along his arms and chest. The bottom of the door should have spread the salt around even further, but it hasn't. The salt is gone. Not a grain remains.

Housekeeping.

How the hell could he have been so damn dumb? Of _course _hotels have housekeeping, someone comes in once a day if you let them, or once every two days when it's obvious you've wandered away somewhere. He would remember that if he stayed more than a couple nights at a time. He would remember that if he wasn't constantly fleeing or so desperate for unconsciousness. This was a deal breaker, though, this little slipup.

Sam steps over the threshold, arms still held out in a defensive stance, all three safeties off the Glock. He loosens his arms a little without realizing he's doing it, keeping the circulation going and the muscles from locking up, every sense focusing on the dim room. Bed made, bathroom door closed, fresh vacuum marks on the carpet. He leaves the door open, knowing it's getting darker by the second but realizing the damn thing could have been hiding Dean _here_ all day. That bit of irony makes too much sense and he's already believing it. If it isn't here already, it'll come _right in behind him_ now that the doorway is clean. Something with his brother's face will come right in and turn him inside out, because he's not going to shoot him until it's really too late for both of them. He promised but he didn't promise _when_.

He kicks the bed to see if anything's under it. It shifts a little, and nothing else moves. The bathroom door slams open into the wall behind when he shoves it, and there's nothing there either. The shower curtain is already open, sparing him the potential cliche' drama. The real Dean would hide there to scare him, and then laugh his ass off when it worked; but Once is too impatient to let something like comedic tension build.

He drops his arms and lets the gun dangle in one hand. The room is clear.

He grabs the canister of salt off the nightstand, grateful that he's had the foresight to keep leaving it everywhere, because he's not sure he wants to go back out to the car this close to dark. He snaps the light on while he's at it.

When he lifts his head to look at the door, it's partially closed from the earlier rebound. He can see thin red scrawls across the age-yellowed surface. Dripping scrawls. It's so fresh that there's still a bead of crimson slipping away toward the floor. Sam knows it's not paint and that yes, Once was here just ahead of him and then walked away again. The letters are an uneven scream of dark color.

_help me sammy it hurts_

This, Sam knows, is what it feels like to lose it.

Dean is all he has left in the world, all that's left who understands him for who (and now what) he is. The hands of his brother are fingerpainting entreaties in blood on his door, and the blood may as well be his own.

If Dean was still anywhere in that shell, he wouldn't have let it get this far. Sam has to come to grips with the fact. He's equipped to deal with this, better than most after the things he's seen and done, but he can't get enough distance to be objective. The shapeshifter was easier. So obvious and straightforward, sharp angles of need expressed in violence and destruction. The revenant wants more than the forced companionship of spilled blood, a lot more. The music of bells that can't be unrung.

It occurs to him that the blood might even be Dean's. He's not sure how desperate the thing is now. There's no way it's used to waiting so long for anything, not the way it's been behaving. Sooner or later it's going to realize that damaging the body will still get results from Sam. He must have come too close to flushing the thing out, and this is his reward.

His hands shake as he lays salt across the threshold this time.

He scrubs the door with more effort than it requires, and the blood comes off but the words are still visible in Sam's mind. The door's been marked forever even if the paint didn't soak the blood in. He leaves it open until almost 2am, then closes it because by then he doesn't mind if it knocks, just so he gets a moment of sight or sound of what's left of Dean.

Nothing comes to the door.

Sometime just before dawn, in the darkest part just before the cycle starts again, he can hear the world breathe in the silence. No sound of traffic, either landbound or arial, reaches him; he thinks about the time he was nine and told Dean he could really hear the planet moving through space when it was that quiet.

_It's just the air rushing in the space between your ears,_ and Dean laughed and that was fine because Dean was the world.

He thinks about removing the salt and letting anything in.

Dawn comes and finds Sam sitting on the floor, his back propped against the side of the bed. He's still facing the door, and the gun is still within reach. When he can summon enough strength to get up, he heads west because it seems to be the thing to do. Maybe it will chase him, if he runs. At least there's that.

**-I-**


	5. Collateral

Thanks to everyone hanging in there on this one - one more chapter and an epilogue.

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**-I-**

When one door closes, another opens somewhere.

The revenant doesn't have time for Sam, tonight. Time enough for blood messages, yes, but really Sam's been quite dull and needed a lesson. Sam's going to be the sweetest grab it's ever made, because it's tasted fear before but not when it's been building for so long, and the boy is so clumsy now.

The previous owner of this quick, well-made shell is _so damn noisy _even though he's trying not to be. The revenant knows Dean is out and thinking coup-thoughts, and yes Sam is such a lighthouse but Dean is a claxon for the blind in here. Sam will get a visit later...when things are settled with the noisemaker.

It catches Dean out in the open.

**-I-**

Dean's thoughts are a stream of obscenities because hey, the _fuck_, this is his own headspace, and he's lost. Sam will have a lot to say about that, and for once Dean really wants to hear it because it'll mean real Sam and real world and an end to all this. Prairie gives way to woods and woods gives way to desert from one blink to the next, and he knows he should have control over this. He's internalized everything his whole life, and what's it got him? Fucking nature trail to hell. There has to be a switch, or a door, or just something that screams 'hey figure it out', and he finds himself trying to imagine these things into being. He should be able to create them if he tries hard enough. He wants a dark, eerie castle with a witch he can jam a broomstick into and douse with water, something he can win against and pound into submission so he can earn his way out.

"This is bullshit," he says aloud, and his internal voice is hoarse with exhaustion. He's winding down and has no idea how to combat anything here because he's so used to doing it all with his hands.

He feels its breath before it reaches him, even though it doesn't breathe; it's not visible but it's all around him, and when he turns there's a sense of a humanoid form that he doesn't see in ways he's used to.

"Hey, finally," Dean says, and it sounds steady but doesn't feel that way. "You want me to buy you dinner before I skullfuck you with that tree over there?"

That quickly, he's being compressed. He'd be screaming if his soul had any breath; he can't hold up and he knows it but it's never stopped him before. It's the same pressure he felt before he was able to barricade himself in, this inexorable shove to the precipice of his own existence. He digs his feet in, he's using his fingernails to try and find purchase in the dust, and he slides away anyway. He only got away the first time because it didn't understand him yet and he wasn't so _tired_. If he can at least make it stop chasing his brother, that'll be enough for now. He can do that much, for awhile. He can be a blazing example, a warning to others, just so long as it works.

_Not like this, not after everything, not leaving Sam._

It's enough to break him but not in the way he thinks he's breaking.

The cracks start in his hands, ice blue and cataract silver; his structual integrity holds only a fraction longer, and when he _goes_ it's a supernova he never. Quite. Feels.

**-I-**

It scuffs a foot outside the door this time, this once, somewhere in eastern Indiana, and pauses well away from the salt. The brother within is fading and the brother without is all stretched shadows and shattered hope and might actually come outside this time.

Sam's so glad to see the face at the door that his relief is obvious. The revenant pauses at the short, sharp laugh and slump of the shoulders that comes and isn't sure how to react. Sam backs up until the backs of his knees hit the single bed and he collapses to a sit, looking completely devastated. Dean's face is smirking at him and it never reaches the eyes. Dean was always eyes first, but Sam is just glad the body is still walking.

"Did you miss me?" Once says.

Sam is careful not to react any more than he already has. The sound of that voice alone wears him down further than the blood on the door did. He's still staring when the eyes widen and the face pales, and the form takes a single deliberate step even further away from the door.

Sam sees the stutter of consciousness and waits, unsure of what it signifies. He realizes it's more of a fullscale glitch than an anomaly when Once grimaces and the right hand arcs out to grab the doorway. The fingers uncurl past the threshold by accident and the hand jerks away again with a hiss.

"Dean," Sam says, and it's barely audible but the form in the doorway hears him and the brief upward glance affords an instant of connection.

The right hand slams open-palm against the outside of the building just outside the doorway, in rage or frustration or out of a lack of control Sam can't tell because the face is expressionless again but also now shining with sweat. "Stay inside, Sam."

Sam is on his feet again and only inches from the saltline, because the words emerge under a lot of pressure but they're all Dean's.

"Dean," Sam says, and he's at his most compelling when he's this earnest, "...come inside. Cross the line and maybe it won't follow." His voice trails off in trembles but he's already gotten everything across that he meant to. He doesn't believe it'll work anyway, and the timbre of his voice betrays it.

Dean is shaking his head. He doesn't have that much of a hold, yet, and it isn't that simple. He has to do something to shake it loose, anything, and salt won't do it. He wheels away from the doorway and starts walking, because at least his legs are working so far. He still doesn't understand what happened, or how he managed to get things together by coming apart, but he's willing to just go with it. He starts thinking of how he can jostle the thing loose and all he's coming up with is physical damage because that's how he's always thought. He can put his head under water or throw himself down some stairs, since it's not likely to enjoy either and ending up in traction will be a better option than letting this go on.

_Listen. Traffic. Motels have easy freeway access, lucky me._

He takes off and every step is leaden because he's loose but close to unravelling and the revenant is wrapping itself around him in coils that weigh him down. Somewhere behind him a confused and painfully hopeful Sam has left the door open and crossed the salt with a shotgun and neither of them are going to look back. He crosses the parking lot with all the grace of an arthritic and the dew on the overgrown grass in the adjoining vacant lot clings to him as he struggles along. He locks up at one point near the edge of a sloping ravine that heads down toward the freeway while _it_ tries to make him turn back to Sam. For just an instant he gets a headful of how badly it wants Sam. The entire world is red with an urge to lay hands on Sam and _get inside_. That next step is really hard, and maybe there are joints that will give way if he keeps this up.

Oh, that's an overpass, right there, and it's closed for repairs.

That'll do.

_"What are you doing!"_

Sammy is screaming, he's in a _panic_, and Dean can finally hear him, but he doesn't stop. He remembers hearing Sam scream out of fear as a child, and the sound had kicked something without remorse to life in Dean's brainstem, something that would rend the world to pieces. It was an instinct down in the reptile part of the evolution ladder, merciless and holding no regard for self. Sam screaming as an adult kicks both brainstem and gut into gear and ups the ante, because children scream at the drop of a hat and adults only scream when they've reached the end of their ability to cope. It makes everything easier because the revenant is a bastard but it can't stand against what he'd do for Sam.

He's only going to have one chance. This is probably going to be bad and he wishes Sam didn't have to see it, but hey: he's been wishing that for _twenty-two years_ and they've gone too far too many times. He doesn't want Sam to have to shoot him to save him. He can't leave Sam with that. His grip is slipping in everything, on himself and the world, and he pushes harder.

_Not even light escapes? Right, asshole? How's this?_

God, he loves overpasses. They're so handy. It's a drop right onto the busy Interstate below. A good, long drop. Dean thinks maybe the hitchhiker is only willing to play chicken for so long. It's shuffled mortal coils before but obviously hates that shit because boy, hasn't it held on to this one way too hard.

"Okay, bitch," he says aloud with his very own vocal cords. "This is the last stop."

_"Dean!"_

"Don't touch me, Sammy," Dean hears himself say as he climbs up onto the siderail, because the thing will use the contact to leap. It's all about the physical with this thing when it isn't mindfucking someone. He can hear Sam struggling just as hard as he is. Dean is wrestling with something foreign lodged in his soul, but Sam is back there wrestling only _himself_, and even Dean knows that's a lot harder. "Whatever happens, don't touch." He makes sure his back is turned because he can always trust Sam with his back and if he sees Sam's face he'll lose all his resolve.

His hands strain against the cold metal so hard they ache. One impulse to hold on, one to let go. The thing has finally realized that Dean is serious. Dean means to hold himself hostage and make a Rorschach test of his lifeblood on the northbound lane below, he's not playing around, and nothing knows that better than the thing sharing his headspace. There's still an internal argument going on.

_Are we choosing? Are we paper-scissors-rock over my brother?_ _Are we overpass-asphalt-with a chance of semis?_

Dean's got both feet over the railing for a leap of faith and luckily it's too dark for anyone below to have noticed him yet. He doesn't want the county suicide squad mobilizing to talk him down because really it's all _redrum_ from here on out and film at eleven is not how he wants to be remembered. _Hey mom no hands!_

"Dean, come on, there's a better way to do this," Sam is saying, and Dean would cover his ears if he could, because that voice is quiet and pleading and inutterably sad. This is what they've come to.

"Not today, Sam," Dean says, and even he can hear how little control he has. He should say more and he can't, he hasn't got breath or time for _hey Sam I'm sorry_ or _it's okay, we've seen enough to know it probably doesn't end here_. This is just a little collateral damage, to him, in the end. "Turn around."

Sam won all the staring contests and most of the standoffs in their past. He's so solid and rooted in himself that he doesn't have to drop his eyes, for anyone. This time, he flinches first. Maybe not a good soldier and maybe not a good son, but Sam all the same and more than the sum of his flaws.

Hands reach forward and get just a double handful of leather to begin with, but then Sam's able to pull in close enough to slide his hands underneath and grab Dean's shirt at the stomach in one hand and get a grip on his belt in the other.

The revenant makes the final leap before Dean can, bridging the gap and reaching for Sam with everything, and Sam feels cold fingers slip past his ribs and around his throat, an invasion too quick to even startle from. He doesn't let it stop him from jerking Dean away from the railing even though the force he uses out of panic nearly knocks them both to the ground. There's a moment where Sam and Dean are caught together, hooks already dug sharp in one and reaching into the other, connected by something older than the souls it holds.

Sam is the last piece and a circuit closes that the revenant had no fundamental idea of; Sam and Dean are suddenly brother-mirrors facing each other and reflecting into eternity now that it's connecting them. There are no gaps left to hide in between the two, and caught between there's no room to pull free either. It shreds and shreds in a live current accidentally created in its greed, twisting in a solar wind made by the same light-not-escaping it had taunted Dean over.

Sam does not need to try and level adjuration against it. Sam _is_ adjuration.

Nothing in the visible spectrum remains, finally, and the tendrils of whatever held them both hostage trail away. There's a terrible moment of silence while the shock of it buffets them, and Dean's form stands and blinks at the middle distance with a sparking, silver-blue gaze.

The light stutters and burns out, camera-flashes capturing nothing. The knees buckle because if the form's not hollow, it's close to it. Sam's death grip keeps the pavement from doing more damage than the revenant already has, and he sits on the ragged gray stone and holds all he has left close to his heart.

Sam is keening into the dark and can't even say why anymore.

**

-I-

**


	6. Coordination

_Fear no evil  
You'll be safe in here, I was saved in here..._  
**Warnings:** smooshies, epithets, denial, etc. Same as it ever was. Many thanks for the kind reviews and for just looking at this in the first place. Should have the epilogue up in the next day or so.

* * *

**-I-**

Sam's standing guard.

There's enough salt at the door and around the beds to raise the entire town's blood pressure. He doesn't know what kind of sublevel noise the revenant may have been making, or what else might be in the area, so he waits.

It wasn't the first time he's had to swing his brother into a fireman's carry, and likely not the last, but he was desperately glad for just the chance, this time. He isn't sure how he knows, but Dean is still in there somewhere. It's his business and his right to know.

Dean has never been as vulnerable to possession as he is right now, and Sam can feel the bullseyes on their backs. That would have been true even if Dean hadn't...come loose, or whatever he's done. Sam can feel differences even though Dean hasn't been conscious yet. Dean is an open door of some sort now and Sam thinks that can be good _and_ bad if they can figure out what it means before anyone - or thing - else does. It's not power by definition but it seems to Sam that Dean may be wearing himself on the surface for awhile and it's going to be odd. If he's right.

They should keep moving but he's not going to throw Dean in the back of the Impala. Something this bad deserves genuine rest even if they have to make a stand to get it.

**-I-**

Dean tries to surface a couple of times and realizes it's a matter of handholds. The terrain is still his but not as familiar as it should have been.

_no one knows you, eldest_

The voice isn't even close to Sam's anymore in his memory although the bastard used Sam's voice to say the words. He realizes now that the voice was never even like Sam's. He wanted to see Sam and so Sam is what he got.

**-I-**

When Dean opens his own eyes on the external world for the first time in maybe a week, it's to a semi-dark motel room. The bathroom door off to his left is open a crack and light is stabbing around the edges. It tells his fogged brain one of two things: Sam didn't want him waking to total darkness, or Sam could no longer handle the darkness. Dean thinks it's a bit of both, because they used to leave the bathroom light on all the time when Sam was a kid.

Sam's certainly not got the light on due to being _in_ the bathroom, because Sam is sprawled partly in the bed with him. His feet are on the floor but his head and left shoulder are on Dean's chest, his left arm flung out across him and the bed. He can't possibly be comfortable but Dean understands about keeping a foot on the floor in case rolling out of bed isn't fast enough. He reflects that bunking with Sam in earlier years had been like getting up close and personal with an octopus; the boy was a snuggler and apparently the years have not changed that. Sam is 6'5" now, something Dean will never be used to.

Sam's head on his chest, though, that's fine and comfortable and he could be used to that. As long as he never has to admit it. All he has to admit is that things were pretty damn bad this time and Sam has earned the right to listen to his brother's heart all night if he wants to, and maybe subconsciously hold him down in case anything else comes calling.

He thinks over what he remembers of that little scene on the overpass, and he thinks about pulling Sam's hair for starters, but all he does is lift his left hand - Christ, why is that so hard? - and thread his fingers through his little brother's hair. Sam is whole and warm and real and actually asleep for once, so he can wait awhile longer to punch him for being an impulsive dumbass.

It's probably the first time he's ever been so happy to see a motel room.

Thinking's hard and boring so he quits.

**-I-**

When he opens his eyes again he's starting over from the beginning and remembers next to nothing. It's daylight. He blinks in it and wonders at how disconnected everything feels. His limbs are his but it feels like he's wearing gloves that are too large for his hands. He's not fitting into his whole skin, there's too much room in there with him. He understands on some level that he's got to fill everything back out.

He has got to get up or his bladder is going to disown him. That part, at least, has filled out.

He rolls toward the door to start the process of sitting up, and _holy shit the door is open. _He braces his arms to shove himself off the bed, not realizing how wide his eyes are or how much terror is visible in his face. It's going to get in again and crush him and go right after Sam -

"Hey, _hey!" _

It's Sam's voice and form coming in the door, and Dean is scrambling for something to use as a weapon. It doesn't occur to him that he hasn't had a weapon until now and that it's mainly because he's no longer in headspace. All he sees is that he left the door open and _let it in._

"Dean. It's over, it's done, come on." Sam's already got his hands up and palms-out, placating, because he can count on one hand the times he's seen the whites of his brother's eyes from a distance.

With his lack of coordination, Dean's managed to knock everything from the nightstand onto the floor, and because of it and the fact that he's still not entirely awake he pauses when Sam sits down on the floor just inside the door with his hands still held out. It takes Dean that long to catch up again and remember.

He relaxes and keeps his feet on the floor, listening to his own heart hammer. He keeps blinking at Sam, and with each blink Sam is a little clearer - and not just in a visual sense. Real Sam, real world. His first comment is suitably profound. "Dude," he says and waggles his head back and forth a little as if he's just come out of the pool a bit waterlogged.

"We're okay." It's all Sam says and all he needs to, the fewest words in the smallest space to convey as much as he can. He does it with eyebrows slightly raised and head tipped forward, tone and body language calm despite the raised hands. Dean mulls it over while his eyes keep darting around the room and checking the door. Check Sam's eyes, check the door, check Sam's eyes. Safe. 'We're okay' means _you're not hurt_ and _I'm not hurt either_ and it also manages to imply _you didn't do anything to me while it had you._

Sam will never tell Dean about the blood on the door. It will occur to him in later years when this week comes up, and he will never share that bit of trivia because Dean is swagger and guns-a-blazing but the failures wound him permanently. He would automatically assume the death of an innocent by a hand almost his. Sam is sad eyes and insight but he is the hardcase here, the true killer of the two underneath. He sets his jaw and settles in for the long haul. They are both _good_, he knows and feels that on levels best left in the quiet, but he also knows that good comes in subtle shades that vary as widely as the colors of the available light.

Given the choice between flash and smoulder, the world may not be kinder to embers but it does respect them. Sam's embers will keep things going when Dean is through burning the world down. So they'll never talk of the blood the same way Dean doesn't ask about what it said in his voice. The same way he doesn't ask about the shapeshifter. If it didn't come straight from him, the real him, then it shouldn't be dignified with acknowledgement.

"Where are we?" Dean says.

"Indiana."

"How long?" Dean says, and doesn't notice that Sam is having a hard time holding his gaze.

"A week since the big adventure started, and you've been out for two days. What's the last thing you remember?" Sam drops his hands and keeps sitting by the door.

Dean is trying to run his hand through his hair and it's all he can do not to fall over on the bed when he does. Tiltling head: bad idea. "Uh...I don't know. Something about telling you not to touch me." He pauses, and Sam recognizes the look in his eyes when he raises them: brimstone.

"You...idiot. Just..._fucking idiot!"_

Dean's best and first way of letting Sam know he's fine is with shouting and arm waving, sound and fury signifying nothing.

"Aaaaaaand you would have done what, with the roles reversed?" Sam is goading him in his best and most caustic drawl as he climbs to his feet. "Let me jump? You're a goddamn hypocrite sometimes."

"I would have loved chasing your dumb ass all over the country trying to pry you loose, assuming it ever let go of me," Dean says, too angry to go on shouting. Dean's best and first way of being truly worried: growling. "I don't think it meant to settle for a hijacking in your case, _Sam."_

_All the dark things just loveyoucan'tresist -_

"Not like you were gonna shoot me either," Dean says. "The least you can do is let me save you when you need it." Sam shoots him an incredulous glare, then finds himself trying not to laugh, because the quickly disappearing look on Dean's face says the words got out before he could shut himself up. To cover, Dean quickly resorts to shouting again. "You moron!"

Sam can feel himself clenching his teeth, and his mouth is pressing into a line of impatience while he pauses a foot away from Dean with his hands on his hips. "Guess what? I don't want it. Did that ever occur to you? It's not okay for you to go all martyr on me every chance you get. I'm gonna do what I can, sometimes. What I did was all I had left." He pauses and with a tilt of his head, adds "You're all I have left. If we've gotta argue about who can afford to let go of who, I didn't bring my violin. Don't be such a _girl_, Dean."

Dean shakes his head and looks disgusted at having one of his own favorite jabs thrown back at him.

"We did what we could with what we had," Sam says. "So...shut up. I can make my own mistakes."

Dean's too tired to bother shouting anymore, so he sighs and looks at the ceiling with a practiced indifference. It causes him to lose his balance, fall over backward and sprawl on the bed. He immediately tries to make it look like he meant to do it. He fails.

"We're obviously gonna be here a couple of days," Sam says. He kicks the bed, not to see if something's under it this time but to annoy what's on it.

"And then what," Dean says.

"Dunno," Sam says. "Dad sent us coordinates three days ago." When Dean frowns and glares at him, he shrugs. "No point reminding you we could have _been_ the coordinates, the way we've been acting."

Dean decides to glare at the ceiling instead, and Sam grins. "You want help getting up?"

_"No."_

"I'm gonna get food then," Sam says. He watches Dean tense a little at the thought of being left alone and knows that would never have happened if Dean had his shell in place. Taking him along would expose them both to more than leaving him somewhere he could salt himself into oblivion. "Whatever else it was up to, at least it fed you. But you've gotta be starving by now." He shoves his hands in his front pockets because he's not sure what else to do with them.

Dean nods a little, careful not to look at Sam. "So what was it?"

"Probably a revenant. The road we were on was fairly new, and until someone paved through there it didn't have a shot at anybody."

"And the construction guys would only have been out there during the day," Dean says. "It had to be you and me, stopping right there, right then. Brilliant."

He pauses, and Sam says, "It might not have been the only one."

Dean raises an eyebrow. "What makes you say that?"

"I don't know. But it won't hurt to check and make sure. It's on our way to the next job anyway." Dean's eyes focus on the ceiling with visible effort, and Sam feels a stab of sympathy. It'll probably hurt. "Prepared, this time. So no one else runs into the same thing."

Dean grins suddenly. "Maybe there's a little cult of them out there. I already know the secret handshake. I don't suppose there's a chance of salting and burning anything?"

Sam shakes his head. "If it was ever human, it was too old for there to still be anything to burn. I think."

He hopes.

--

After a couple days of eating and sleeping, Dean's ready to do anything but keep hanging around. He has enough coordination back to count on his reflexes but not enough to make Sam happy. Dean wins the argument for getting back on the road but Sam wins the coin toss for who's driving the first leg. Sam purposely buys a converter to hook up to the cigarette lighter and aCD player and several CDs. Dean purposely makes a show of sleeping for the first several miles.

"I hate this hippie folk crap," Dean says when he's awake.

"Dave Matthews is a genuis, Dean," Sam says. "If you'd give it a chance, which you will, you'll probably like some of it."

Dean makes a face and slumps further down in the seat. "They ripped off Dylan's _Watchtower."_

Sam sighs loudly and taps his fingers along the steering wheel. "What's the rule?"

Dean is silent for a moment but Sam doesn't need the benefit of anything approaching telepathy to hear the stream of annoyed grouching in his brother's thick skull.

"Shotgun, blah blah, cakehole," Dean finally mumbles. "Wiseass."

Half an hour later Dean grudgingly admits to enjoying 'Jimi Thing'. He does so by bobbing his head slightly along to the beat. Sam is generous enough not to laugh.

Not back where they were, yet, but that isn't necessarily bad.

**-I-**


	7. Epilogue: Dividing By Zero

_

* * *

__6 miles outside Spencer, WV_

**-I-**

"This it?"

Sam nods, because he knows Dean is already looking at him and he doesn't have to turn his head to know it. Dean's attention is like fingers brushing across his skin these days, and no telling how long that'll go on. Dean's always been a force to be reckoned with and now he's a hum of energy and intent in the back of Sam's skull, like the pickups of electric guitars when they're too close to fluorescent lights. They've only been out in public, as in, in a crowd of more than five since Dean awoke, and Sam knows for certain he saw that one girl flinch when Dean was checking her out from _behind. _Cuffing him on the back of the head wasn't enough of an explanation but it did keep his attention.

They are back at the beginning.

"I don't remember this," Dean says.

"Nothing worth remembering," Sam replies absently. "Before it grabbed you."

When they finally get out of the car, they leave the doors open by unspoken understanding that the concussion of closing them might attract more attention than the engine did; and open doors are attractive enough to whatever might be out here. It rained right up until dark. Everything is damp and sound carries easily.

Sam has yet to explain why he thinks there was more than one. Dean doesn't bother questioning him any further because he gives Sam at least that much - trusting him with his hunches. He follows Sam places he doesn't want - no, can't _stand_ - to go. Kansas, for one, to the house he meant never to see again, and now dark roads where he's recently been _violated._

No, they don't speak of it.

They're here for two things: to get rid of any others, and to make sure that Dean is alone in his own skin. The thing had been waiting there rather than traveling around, which meant attachment to a place. It would likely have been attracted to any human presence, to ground itself, but Sam would have been irresistible. Had it been patient enough to wait and figure out which brother was shining, things would have been very different. Sam understands that Dean was the more vulnerable because all his energy goes to hiding until he accidentally gives at the seams.

Dean is shining now too but it's not _the_ Shining. Dean's seams are all unlaced for awhile, that's all. He's off his game and can't admit it even to himself so he's dangerous as well as vulnerable. He's also discovered to his great amusement that when he snaps his fingers, there's a brief spark of the same caliber they got as kids when chewing wintergreen Lifesavers in the dark. Sam thinks Dean's soul has always been too much for his own body to hold, however that works, and now that the doors are all open he's probably too much for the world until he puts his boundaries back in place again. Dean has always been loud but lately he's way too much to handle; he hardly speaks but everything he does is loud underneath. Sam's pretty sure it doesn't even take anyone with sensitivity to hear him.

Sam knows absolutely jack about it and isn't likely to try and figure out more than he already has.

_What the hell do you suppose we really are, Sam?_

Dean's earlier question was rhetorical and sarcastic, but Sam decides it's that they've lived their lives touching and being touched by what few believe or understand, and it makes them so left of center. Not necessarily better but something more than your standard carbon-based life form.

Their pockets are full of salt. That's what Sam is willing to wager on the likelihood of the place holding more than miles of damp foliage. Dean's got the shotgun and couldn't care less whether it'll do any good. Their father taught them that _armed men behave differently_ and that sometimes makes a difference.

They stand shoulder to shoulder near the rear bumper of the car and listen to the breeze in their ears. It's mostly overcast and off to the west the distant haze of light pollution stains the low clouds a grim mauve. The occasional star shows a glimmering face between the wisps, but not enough to steer by. They don't have to speak. They do because their voices are necessary contact.

"Feel anything?"

Sam is cautious in the way he says it. He is not asking for something literal.

"You mean wanting to run crazy away from you and the car screaming 'free at last, free at last'?" Dean says. "No. Nobody in here but me." There's a grin to go with it but it's nervous, something Dean always thinks Sam doesn't pick up on.

He no sooner gets the words out than he's startling away from Sam and the car and staring out into the dark to his left. Sam doesn't question him, doesn't try and break the quiet, just comes to stand close to him to listen and watch. He's just behind Dean's left shoulder, where he usually is, shield and guard. He's closer than Dean usually tolerates, but this is not usually and Dean is not quite _Dean_ again yet.

There's a gathering that Sam can't see. Dean can't really see it either but he's looking with more than his eyes. There's nothing left of the bodysnatcher that grabbed him. Still, he can feel something similar nearby. It's only natural to try and _look. _They stand at the ready, motionless, predators in the territory of others, testing the air. There's a handful of maybe-shadows or random bits of motion in their peripheral vision and nothing more.

The EMF meter in the backseat is _just now_ going off.

Something comes close enough for Dean to feel. He doesn't back away; he's being prowled and assumes Sam is as well. He stills the visceral impulse to run because he knows he's being tested, he refuses to give anything the satisfaction, and _fuck you I still have my boots on._

Sam rests a closed fist on the top of Dean's shoulder in reaction to his own nervousness as well as Dean's.

The moment he makes contact, the shadows scatter. The circuit closes again.

"Yeah, you _better_ run," Dean tells the darkness. He's got the shotgun over one shoulder and Sam standing over the other; he needs nothing else. He makes a rude gesture into the darkness before waving a dismissive hand and heading back for the car. "Fuckers. Boring."

Sam stands a moment longer, measuring. They'll mark this place on the map and come back to it with a plan, because there's something to get to the bottom of here and they aren't equipped to do more than chase. The chances of someone else running afoul of the place by stopping in just the right spot are small, and Sam tucks that sparse solace into his jacket along with his hands. It may have been that only one was that desperate, that ravenous, that tempted. Saw too much, got too greedy, ran out of luck.

"Sam."

Sam turns to see Dean leaning against the car's right rear quarter panel.

"There's nothing here to worry about," Dean says. He pauses and glances around again. Sam can barely see him in the ambient evidence of civilization off to the west, and it doesn't matter. He isn't posing this time. "Trust me. The rest of 'em...they're just lost."

Sam looks into the dark again briefly and feels it look back, and he's less concerned. That's not their gig. Not yet, anyway; maybe when the world is less rife with demons run rampant, they can turn their attention to the discontented dead. To help in other ways.

_What the hell do you suppose we really are, Sam?_

Sometimes God divides by zero and comes up aces. Sam shrugs and goes to close his half of the circle he makes with his opposite number.

**-I-I-I-I-**


End file.
